There has been much discussion in the U.S. news about Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, and close associate of President-Elect Trump's selection for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. The link below to the website for the television show "Biography" from Arts & Entertainment Network gives the basic details of his sudden rise to political prominence in Russia, during waning years of the adminitration of Boris Yeltsin.Putin had previously risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB.

The KGB(Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) was the Soviet Union's security committee, and was the world’s largest spy and state-security machine, involved in all aspects of life of ordinary people in the Soviet Union.

According to the article (linked below) by the Cold War Museum in Warrenton, Virginia, "The KGB was a secretive and secluded organization, and it has been said that, 'Its doors are shut tightly to the public.'”

After the Soviet Union was dissolved, the KGB was "dismembered into separate agencies" (from the Guardian article, linked below). The FSB is the agency that now "is much more than just an ordinary security service ... Combining the functions of an elite police force with those of a spy agency, and wielding immense power." (Also from the Guardian article)